XplanaZine

My next high school reunion is in a couple of years and I’m pretty sure I’ll miss this one. Not that missing it will be a new experience. Heck, I didn’t go to the last three before this one either. The reason I stay away, I guess, is that I tend to prefer my imagination over historical accuracy.

For example, yesterday I was looking at some old pictures and trying to imagine what the people in them must look like today. It was fun thinking about how much hair they had lost or weight they had gained and in my mind I could see each of them as they might be.

Class reunions are the opposite of looking at old pictures — they leave entirely too little to the imagination. I like remembering Teresa Nations as a lithe ballerina or Manfred Rottler as a slender and agile basketball player. I like being able to match Kay Higgins’ flaming red hair to her sharp wit and intellect. Now, if I actually go to one of these class reunions, the likelihood is that I won’t be able to maintain my illusions or my synaptic connections with the friends of my memories. So, I stay away and enjoy my imagination.

It’s kind of like the whole Star Wars trajectory. I mean, does it make sense to anyone else that the story is going to end at its lowest point? I guess I’m just the kind of guy who prefers for his stories to go from bad to good rather than from good to bad.

Which brings me to the final exam I administered this past week. You see, for the past three years I’ve been teaching online classes at the university and this week, once again, I met my students physically for the first and only time at our final exam. It’s all pretty strange for me even now that I’ve been doing it for a while.

That’s probably because I spent the first twenty-plus years of my career as a classroom teacher and thrived on the physical interaction I enjoyed with my students. Now, I see them only once and it’s at a time when they are not necessarily at their best. The stress of test-taking tends to inhibit any significant interaction and tends not to bring out their real talents. It takes some getting used to.

Which is not to say that my online classes don’t offer some great interaction and fun learning moments. They do. It’s just that all those moments come via text interaction. Throughout the whole semester I learn the students’ personalities and tendencies and each one’s sense of humor (or lack thereof) via e-mail, journals and discussion board interaction.

As I get to know them, I imagine the physical details of their reality. I make up my own pictures and happy endings for their lives. Then, when I come into contact with them, there’s this strange incongruency between what I believe and want them to be and what they really are. It’s disappointing. You see, I like my students they way I imagine them being and I really don’t want to mix that version with the real one.

And this makes me wonder further if there isn’t something inherently wrong with mixing the digital and analog experiences in education in the first place. Maybe distributed or digital teaching and learning should be about being able to hold onto our imagined stories about each other. Maybe it can be a place where our stories always have happy endings.

And– perhaps even more important in the total scheme of things–my students get to imagine me however they’d like me to be. Who knows? Some of them might even like me better that way than if they’d known the real thing.. (Was that look on their faces one of disappointment at what I really look like or anxiety over the test?) When it comes right down to it, I’m more than happy to let these students envision their professor being however they want him to be.

Maybe the real value of online education will be discovered when we untether it from traditional education models and let everyone’s imagination reign and run wild. Maybe we should and can move from the concept of the digital learning space to the imagined learning space. One where people can’t and won’t get in the way. One where every teacher is the ideal mentor and every student is hungry to learn and participate in a community of goodwill.

The imagined learning space will be a place where revolution is possible, but then so is everything else. It will be a place where we may talk about conflict or tension, but in which everyone basks in the warm and safe feeling of good will.

I don’t know if I’ll teach online again next year. But if I do, I’m going to insist on never seeing my students. I’m going to insist on keeping my paradise and my happy endings.

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